


Brothers

by captainkippen



Series: JATP Appreciation Week 2020 [5]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: 1990s, Best Friends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:00:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainkippen/pseuds/captainkippen
Summary: Day 5: Write a fic focused on friendship/found family.After witnessing yet another fight between his parents, Reggie goes to his friends for comfort.Written forJulie and the Phantoms Appreciation Week 2020.
Relationships: Alex & Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Luke Patterson & Reggie
Series: JATP Appreciation Week 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993720
Comments: 5
Kudos: 148
Collections: JATP Appreciation Week





	Brothers

Reggie knew that it hadn’t always been like this. At one point in time, a point at which he had been too small to remember it now, his parents had loved one another. They had been a team, a real family before money became an issue and life got in the way. It was a shame, but it was the hand that they’d been dealt.

On an average night, he was pretty good at ignoring it. He would go upstairs, turn on his walkman, and listen to whatever tape he’d most recently borrowed from Alex as loud as he could to drown out the screaming downstairs. Sometimes he’d think about the conversations he’d overheard between the kids at school, the ones talking about holidays with their families, or weekend trips away camping, or the barbecues their parents would hold for their neighbours which they’d roll their eyes at but Reggie thought sounded amazing. He would kill to have a family like that, to not have to lie awake at night listening to the sounds of yet another disagreement gone sideways and imagining what it would be like if he had come home to warm family dinners where they all sat at the table rather than ringing silence and cold plates of leftovers he ate alone in his room.

Tonight was different. They’d been arguing before he’d even come home, and when he’d finally had the chance to escape upstairs it was to grab a change of clothes and disappear out the door again. He couldn’t stay in the house. Not tonight. Not when it felt like the windows might shatter and the walls would cave in around him. 

When he was younger he’d spent a lot of time wondering if maybe it was his fault. Maybe, had he not come along when he did, his parents would still hold each other the way they did in their wedding photos – tender and serene in their love. They might still talk to one another without shouting. There would be no name-calling. There would be no shattered glass.

These days he knew there was nothing for it. Even if he’d come along at a different time, even if they weren’t broke and miserable, chances were that his parents would still have grown to resent one another. They’d been married too young, grown apart too fast, turned into different people from when they’d met. It wasn’t a crime. He just wished they didn’t make it so obvious.

“Hey guys,” he said, slipping inside the door of the garage the band had been using to practice in the past few months. Luke and Bobby looked up from where they’d been hunched over their guitars on the couch. Alex was fiddling with one of the amps in the corner – he frowned when he saw him.

“Okay, Reg?”

Reggie shrugged, plastering on the best smile he could muster. It must’ve looked terrible because even Luke, who wouldn’t be pulled out of the songwriting zone if a tornado was coming right at him, put his pen down. 

“What happened?”

“Oh, you know,” he shuffled his feet. “My folks are fighting again. Figured I’d just crash here tonight.” 

It wouldn’t be the first time he – or any of them really – had slept in the garage rather than going home. Nobody in the band had what anyone would call a well-adjusted home life right now. Sometimes they’d all stay together, regardless of who’d had the rough end of the stick that day, piling up on a makeshift mattress of couch cushions and talking about everything and anything until the sun came up. It was the only place they could really be free. 

“You okay, though?” Alex asked. “‘Cause you look kinda bummed, dude.”

“Yeah,” he tried to reassure him. “It’s just… yeah. It never used to be like this…”

The guys looked at one another for a moment and then before he knew what was happening, they enveloped him in a triple-sided hug. Their arms were firm and strong around him, holding him together, the only thing keeping him from breaking into pieces right then and there. A small sob escaped him – he couldn’t help it – but his friends said nothing and clung on tighter. 

“Hey, you wanna go see a movie?” Luke suggested when they finally pulled away. “There’s that new Disney one out, you know… with the talking lions or whatever.”

Reggie shook his head, not trusting himself to speak. Disney movies always ended up making him cry anyway, he didn’t think he could handle more tears tonight. 

“Or… we could go to the playground and hang out at the jungle gym?”

No.

“How about we get on a bus and ride around for a while, see where we end up? We could go down to the animal shelter and look at the puppies again if you wanted.”

Even the prospect of puppies wasn’t enough. What he needed right now was to be with his friends, the three best guys he’d ever know, and push away the outside world with a loud record and some snacks.

“I think I just wanna stay here tonight,” Reggie sniffed. “Do we have any chips left? I wanna make nachos.”

In the end, Luke and Bobby had to make a run to the convenience store around the corner. Alex stayed with Reggie and the two of them sprawled out on the couch together in a bundle of haphazard limbs. Alex didn’t press Reggie for details – he’d heard it all before anyway – but he gave him a comforting smile and launched into a distracting rundown of his day at the mall. Reggie smiled, grateful for the shoulder to lean on, and settled in to listen.

By the time they had tucked into the food, a Nirvana CD in the player filling the garage with Kurt Cobain’s angst-ridden voice, Reggie was starting to feel a little bit better. He didn’t know what he would do without his bandmates. They were the only people who really got him. He knew, no matter what, that he could always rely on them to catch him when he was falling and prop him up when he was too weak to stand tall alone. 

It struck him then, sat there on the couch sandwiched between his friends as they laughed about Bobby’s latest failed attempt to flirt with one of the girls down at the video rental place, that he _did_ have a real family. They might not have been the picture-perfect American Dream, or a nuclear family in a house with a white picket fence, but that didn’t mean they weren’t legit. Reggie had three awesome best friends who loved him without question, and that was all he needed. They were a part of him, and he was a part of them, brothers through and through.

  
  
  



End file.
